Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

No, it’s not that game show, ‘Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader’. It’s something more serious. Chance upon an article on the local newspaper yesterday. An article about the words that our 10 – 11 years old kids are learning in school. I felt ashamed of myself after looking at the words.

Then again, why would a 10 years old has to learn these words when we, adults don’t use them in our daily life? In fact, we may not use some of these words in our entire life.

What’s the point of learning words that are not applicable to our daily living?

Or another question that haunted me during my school days. What’s the point of studying when I won’t be applying most of what I learned during adulthood? I didn’t understand why did I have to learn algebra or why I had to speak like Shakespeare.

One of the big reason how come some kids don’t do well in school is the lack of reasons. Kids don’t know why they must go to school or to learn certain subjects. Human beings are motivated by reason, in another words the big WHY.

How many words do you know from the list above? Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

I’m not sure if we are trying to show the world our 1st class Singapore education system by having our 10 years old learning such gigantic vocabulary?

What are the chances of backfiring?

Joy of learning will suffer. Results will suffer.

As an adult, will you produce good results in work consistently if you don’t enjoy your work? To produce great results consistently, love what you do. This statement is said by many successful men and women in the world. If this applies to adults, this applies to children.

When a child doesn’t loves what he/she is learning, how will he/she produces good result?

What do you think? Will this be better or worse off? What will be the implication?

I’m just wondering, by the time my kids are 10 years old, what kind of astronomical words are they going to learn?

I kinda agree that kids these days are being injected with words that are relatively not so valuable for them to learn. I hope that whoever we entrust our children with – they will give the same protection and care we do give our children every single day.Pam recently posted..Top 5 Part-Time Jobs for Full-Time Students